#ensembledeformule — Public Fediverse posts

Piano Quintet Amy Beach streamed with a view of Scheveningen beach

Amy Beach (c) George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress)

Hooray, since the beginning of this month we can finally visit the theatre, the movies or a concert again! – Oops, I cheered too early. No hall can make a living from a maximum of 30 visitors, so a lot of events are still only offered online.

The young Dutch Ensemble de Formule will give a concert in Zuiderstrandtheater in The Hague on 10 June. Since they’re playing in the Harbour foyer, the live stream will offer a view of Scheveningen beach.

According to their website, the five musicians will dive ‘into the magic of surrealism’. To this end they play piano quintets by César Franck and Amy Beach. – And here they’ve got me: Beach is a great composer, whose work is far too rarely performed. However I would contest that her music is ‘surrealistic’ and expresses both ‘raw beauty and madness’. But since the quintet are young and eager, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt: I’m tuning in on June 10th!

Child prodigy

Amy Beach (1867-1944) was born on September 5, 1876 as Amy Cheney in the state of New Hampshire. Her father was a manufacturer and importer of paper, her mother had a modest concert career as a singer and pianist. Amy turned out to be the proverbial child prodigy. Already as a one year old she sang forty songs by heart, at two she made up counter-melodies to her mother’s singing, at three she taught herself to read and at four she could play any piece of music by ear.

She took piano lessons from her mother and gave her first recital at the age of seven. Here she played some of her own works along compositions by Handel, Chopin and Beethoven. Contrary to what was customary at the time, her parents did not send her to a European conservatory but to a private school in Boston. Her talent did not go unnoticed and at the age of sixteen she made her debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, with an acclaimed performance of the Piano Concerto in F by Frederic Chopin.

This boosted her career enormously and that same year she published the song The Rainy Day, her first composition to appear in print. She knew very well how to promote her music and managed to publicize all her consecutive pieces as well. This eventually led to an oeuvre comprising over 300 works. It was performed by renowned singers such as Emma Eames and ensembles such as the Boston Handel & Haydn Society. Her progress was closely monitored by a group of passionate fans. – Among them the surgeon Henry Beach, whom Amy married in 1885.

Concert practice curbed

Amy was only 18 years old at the time, Beach was twenty-four years her senior. And, it sounds familiar: he immediately curbed the stormy career of his brand-new wife. Luckily he was somewhat less rigorous than Gustav Mahler, who forbade Alma to continue composing once they would have entered in wedlock. Henry ‘merely’ demanded Amy to drastically restrict her concert practice and donate her income to charity. Nor was she allowed to take on piano students, for it was considered uncouth for a woman to earn an independent income.

However, Henry did encourage her to continue composing. After all, his infatuation originated in his admiration for her talent. When he came home from work in the evening he asked what she had composed that day. If this was a song, he would sing it out loud while she accompanied him at the piano, and then voice his opinion.

Giving public performances only once or twice a year, Amy was able to dedicate most of her time to her creative work. Her husband helped her publish her scores and collect royalties. – Since this didn’t involve public appearances this was apparently ok.

Moreover, Henry stimulated his wife to broaden her horizon and venture beyond chamber music into large-scale compositions. In 1892 she broke through with her Mass in E flat for choir, soloists and orchestra. Four years later she composed her Symphony in e minor opus 32, which is still occasionally performed today.

Classical and Irish inspiration

With her symphony Amy Beach responded to Antonín Dvorák, who had been director of the New York Conservatory from 1892-1895. Dvorák had encouraged American composers to seek inspiration in the music of the black community and the Indians, the original inhabitants of their country.

Beach, however, disagreed with him. ‘It is much more likely that we of the North are influenced by old English, Scottish and Irish melodies’, she declared self-assured. She put her money where her mouth was and based her Symphony on themes from a collection of Irish folk music. The subtitle ‘Gaelic’ refers to this Irish inspiration.

Gradually she became one of America’s leading composers, and thus functioned as a role model for budding female composers. Together with renowned masters such as Arthur Foote and Horatio Parker, she belonged to the so-called ‘New England School of Composers’. They pursued a classical sound ideal and in her early music we can hear echoes of Brahms.

In the last movement of her 1908 Piano Quintet, Beach even quotes a theme from Brahms’s Piano Quintet. On 10 June, Ensemble de Formule will play the second movement of her own quintet. This is a gripping lament full of languorous lines of the strings, supported by dreamy runs of the piano. As the argument becomes more intense and poignant, the dynamics increase and the piano plays stronger and brighter counterparts. Shame that De Formule will only perform this one movement.

I look forward to hearing Amy Beach performed against the backdrop of Scheveningen beach. Furthermore I am really curious as to how ‘surrealistic’, ‘raw’ and ‘crazy’ the five young musicians will make her wonderful music sound!

Watch the livestream of Ensemble de Formule from Zuiderstrandtheater on Vimeo.

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